


The Detective Dances

by Kiwikiwi591



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Army Gathering?, Cute, Dancing, Fluff, Johnlock - Freeform, M/M, Pre-Reichenbach, Shy John, Shy Sherlock, Yeah not too sure on that
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-05
Updated: 2014-04-05
Packaged: 2018-01-18 05:41:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,771
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1417192
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kiwikiwi591/pseuds/Kiwikiwi591
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock Holmes loves to dance. What he doesn't love is when someone finds out about this little fact.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Detective Dances

Sherlock stepped inside from the cool February air, jar of eyeballs in hand. Molly, as always, had a parting gift ready for him to experiment on. Sherlock was thankful for the thought, even if he hadn’t shown it. Things were always dull without a case on, and sometimes experiments with various body parts would just have to do. He huffed, struggling a bit to shut the door with both hands occupied. The pause was enough time for Sherlock to hear something coming from up the stairs inside 221b.

Sherlock immediately stood still, automatically listening intently to assess the situation.

“Alright… One, two, three- Oh, bugger...” came a muffled voice. A muffled John voice, to be precise.

Sherlock, ever curious, stepped lightly up the stairs as to not disturb whatever John was up to. He could hear the floorboards creaking as John stepped around in what sounded like a circular pattern.

“Come on, you old git, you’re not going to embarrass yourself in front of the army lads… One, two, three, four… One, two- Agh!”

A bump. He must have smacked into something.

Sherlock was practically pressed against the door at this point, and as such noticed that it wasn’t shut all the way. He set down the jar of eyeballs and slowly, carefully opened it a bit further, just enough to step inside.

Sherlock blinked a couple times at what he saw. It definitely wasn’t expected.

John was waltzing. Or attempting to, anyway.

John was also apparently so distracted in his attempt that he didn’t notice Sherlock staring at him from the doorway.

He was clumsily stepping in slow circles, hands held out to mimic a hold on a partner.

“Alright, one, two, three, four…” he mumbled to himself, trying to keep a steady rhythm.

“You would probably be doing better if you were actually practicing with music,” Sherlock said.

John jumped, slamming into the table.

“Sherlock-?” he yelled as he fell. He quickly jumped up again, face turning bright red. “Christ, have you ever heard of knocking!?”

“The door wasn’t shut. Knocking would have just opened it further.”

“Which you apparently did anyway! How long were you standing there?” he asked, brushing off his jumper.

“Long enough to witness your abominable attempt at dance,” Sherlock replied.

“Because you could do any better,” John muttered.

Sherlock said nothing. John, surprised at the lack of witty response, looked at him incredulously. He narrowed his eyes slightly.

“…Could you?” John said.

“Oh, don’t be ridiculous. Dancing is just movement of muscles to the beat of a song. It’s neither special nor difficult,” he replied.

“You dance?” He said, just the lightest bit of a smile tugging at his lips.

“As I said, it’s neither special nor difficult,” he said. Sherlock’s face began to tint just the slightest hint of red, but he pushed it away quickly.

Not quickly enough.

“Oh my God, you dance! Sherlock Holmes dances!” John said, grinning widely.

Sherlock gave a glare, but this didn’t deter John at all. As a matter of fact, John began to laugh. When it was obvious that the subject wasn’t going to be dropped any time soon, Sherlock began to walk quickly to his room. He knew it was childish, but he didn’t care.

John’s smile disappeared. “Sherlock?” he said as the man breezed past him.

Sherlock continued walking. John followed.

“Sherlock, I didn’t mean anything by it-“ he began. Sherlock turned around quickly.

“Shut up.”

And with that, Sherlock stepped inside his room, shut the door, and locked it.

John stood there for a moment, unsure of what to do. After a couple seconds of debate, he sighed and walked back to the main room. He flopped down in his chair, deciding that it would be best to wait a while before even attempting an apology.

\--

John stepped in circles again. The army reunion was the next day, and he refused to embarrass his date with his two left feet. He followed the bit of advice Sherlock had given before storming off and turned on some quiet waltz music. It was easier to keep a beat this way, but no matter what he tried, he just couldn’t get the steps right. Always too close or too far, always bumping into furniture... God, Laura was going to _hate_ trying to dance with him.

“You need a partner to practice with,” came a voice from behind him.

Once again, John jumped at the sudden presence of the man. He was going to have to have a talk with him about making some _noise_ when approaching people.

He turned around to face Sherlock, immediately feeling guilty about the earlier conversation.

“I’m… Sorry about earlier,” he began, “I really didn’t mean to upset or embarrass you, it was just… Unexpected. You, dancing.” He let out a short little laugh at the thought, but was careful to not repeat the events of the afternoon. “It just didn’t seem like something you’d do.”

“I went to a private school, if you remember. Mummyforced me into dance lessons there,” Sherlock replied.

“Oh. So you don’t particularly enjoy it,” John said.

“I never said that.”

“Oh.” He said again.

There was a bit of an awkward pause. After a moment, Sherlock looked around and sighed. He walked to the front door, bolted it, and then double checked that all of the curtains were shut.

“Sherlock?” John said, confused. Sherlock stepped closer. A bit too close. John stepped back.

Sherlock sighed again. “You’re going to embarrass yourself at the gathering,” he said, “You need to practice. And since you’re obviously not a practiced dancer, you need a partner.”

John blinked. Did Sherlock seriously just ask to dance with him?

He stepped forward again. “Now, give me your hands.”

John hesitated, then obliged. Sherlock guided his hands to the proper position, but John moved them back.

“You’re going to have to cooperate if you ever want to learn anything.”

“Okay, fine, but do we really have to do it this way?”

“If you want to learn properly, which I’m sure you do, then yes.”

John sighed, and let Sherlock guide his hands again. One hand on Sherlock’s back, the other clasped in his. He blushed a bit at the position, but tried not to concentrate on it.

“Now, you’re in the leading position, so you’ll need to follow my directions.”

Sherlock rotated both of them a bit.

“Listen to the beat. Find the triplet, and concentrate on the beat.”

John listened carefully, eventually finding the pattern in the music.

“Alright, now what?” he asked, shifting awkwardly.

“You need to step and rotate both of us 90 degrees on the first beat of each triplet,” Sherlock explained.

“Okay- What?”

Sherlock sighed patiently.

“Just step when I tell you. You should pick up the pattern on your own eventually.”

Sherlock tuned into the music, catching the rhythm quickly. Once the melody began, he put himself and John into the proper position again.

“Step.”

John stepped quickly to the side, tripping over Sherlock’s feet. The pair eventually found the proper angle, but were already far out of beat.

Sherlock refrained from rolling his eyes.

“You need to step more carefully,” he advised.

“Yeah, obviously. Kind of hard when I don’t know what I’m doing wrong,” he replied.

“You’re stepping at too short a distance. You need to take your partner’s steps into account,” he explained.

John nodded.

Sherlock listened again for the beat to begin.

“Step.”

John moved again, but this time was much more conscious of his distance. The move was still a bit clumsy, but it was much better than when he’d practiced that morning.

“Better, relatively speaking. You still move a bit too quickly…”

As the seconds turned to minutes, and minutes turned to hours, John began to slip into a kind of trance. He slowly got more and more automatic in his movements, gliding through the dance with the music. Losing track of the time, he began to focus on Sherlock. He moved with so much fluidity, and yet had such a look of concentration on his face. It was like he had to focus intensely just to even begin to move, and yet did it with such grace that it should be automatic. John wasn’t thinking of anything anymore; his entire mind was just of Sherlock dancing, the feel of the other man’s movements complimenting his. The simple beauty of dance.

He was snapped out of his thoughts after an indeterminable amount of time by Sherlock stopping rather abruptly. Sherlock pressed a button on the disk player, stopping the music. After so much time with it playing in the background, everything seemed almost too quiet.

After a moment, Sherlock stepped away from John, putting his hands behind his back.

“You’ve had plenty of practice. You’ll do fine; your skills are passable enough to impress your date tomorrow,” he said. “You need to sleep. There’s only six hours until your alarm goes off.”

John glanced at the clock. 3 AM. They’d been dancing for four hours.

Christ, how could time have gone like that?

John looked up to say something to Sherlock, but he was already gone. He heard the bedroom door shut.

He sighed to himself, thinking. He couldn’t quite wrap his mind around it. He’d just spent four hours not just dancing, but _waltzing_ with Sherlock Holmes. They’d been close enough for there to only be a couple centimeters between them at a time, and yet John couldn’t be bothered by it. On the contrary, he rather liked the thought.

He stopped for a moment. He’d _liked_ dancing with Sherlock. He’d liked being so close, and being in his guiding grasp. He’d liked the little advice the other man had given every once in a while, which in retrospect was a bit uncharacteristic. Actually, Sherlock was normally much more apt to point out his failures rather than help him to fix them. Now what did _that_ mean? That combined with the way that he had walked away so suddenly…

John pinched the bridge of his nose. Dancing shouldn’t have brought out so many issues.

He decided to sleep on it.

\--

John straightened the jacket of his suit for the fifth time, making sure he looked presentable. He took a sip of the remnants of his morning tea; gone cold. He sighed, still feeling unsure. He hadn’t been able to stop thinking of the previous night, keeping him away from sleep for another hour; and even after that, he thought of it again once he saw how silent Sherlock was that morning. Normally he would have said at least something that could be loosely interpreted as a “good morning”, or mumbled to himself as he worked on an experiment. Today, however, Sherlock had immediately plopped himself in front of his microscope and hadn’t spoken a word, even when John attempted conversation; he decided against taking it away in an attempt to coax some speech out of him. Instead, John had gone about the business of getting ready to leave.

Just as John grabbed his coat, his phone buzzed. John picked it up, reading the text on screen.

_Laura:_

_Won’t be able to go today. Very sorry for short notice; emergency in family. Will speak later._

John stared at the screen for a moment, sighing in frustration. At first, he sat down, trying to decide if it was worse to show up without a date or to not go at all. But then, an idea hit him. An insane idea that was likely to end terribly, but an idea nonetheless. He turned it over and over in his head, switching from side to side, finally working up some nerve. He walked over to Sherlock, where he was still occupied with what were evidently some very interesting mold spores.

John cleared his throat loudly, hoping Sherlock would take the hint.

He didn’t.

“Sherlock,” John said.

Sherlock continued to study the image on the microscope.

John shifted uncomfortably, beginning to lose his nerve. It was now or never.

He took the dangerous route, and grabbed the microscope, quickly pulling it away.

Rather than the backlash he was expecting, Sherlock instead turned slowly to look at John in confusion, blinking a few times as he was torn out of his thoughts. There were red rings around his eyes where he’d had his face pressed against the eyepieces for so long.

“John?” he said.

“Sherlock, I need you to listen for a second,” John said.

Sherlock didn’t answer, but just continued to stare at him.

“So…” John said. He paused, considering one more time if this was a good idea. Sherlock waited expectantly.

“Turns out Laura can’t make it. Family problems, apparently,” he began.

“Oh.”

“So… I have no date now. Partner, I mean,” he said. This wasn’t working like he’d planned.

“I see. Well, I’m sure you can find one on short notice,” Sherlock said, beginning to stand, “women seem to love an army man. Just mention where you’re going and it should be-“

“No, Sherlock,” John said, cutting him off. Sherlock stopped, looking at him with a mix of frustration and confusion.

“Look… I, uh… I need someone who can dance. Dance well. That was the whole reason behind the silly practicing I did all morning. Laura dances really well, and I didn’t want to embarrass her…” he continued.

“I know-“

“Yes, I know you know, Sherlock,” John said. He stopped, rubbing the back of his neck. Christ, why did he think this would be a good idea?

“Alright, I’m just going to say it. Sherlock, will you come with me? As my… Date?” He asked.

Sherlock stood completely still, frozen. It didn’t even look like he was breathing.

“…Sherlock?”

He still said nothing, just staring off into space.

“Ok, look, forget I said anything, I knew it was a bad idea, I was just wondering-“ John said, all of it pouring out at once.

“Yes.”

John stopped, staring at the man in front of him. “Sorry, what?”

“Yes, I’ll go with you,” he said.

John said nothing. Then, slowly, a smile spread across his face. He laughed a bit.

“Right. Good.” He said, breathless.

Sherlock, expressionless as always, watched John as he took small paces, laughing and grinning to himself. He was so happy, at just a small little phrase.

Then, finally, Sherlock smiled too.

\--

Sherlock and John danced slowly as the band played on the stage. John was worried at first about possible comments on the gender of his date, but it seemed that he wasn’t the only one. As a matter of fact, he saw more approving glances than anything else.

Date. It was odd to refer to Sherlock that way; as anything even remotely close to a date.

John smiled again at the thought, turned the word over in his head. He liked it.

“You’re doing it again,” Sherlock said.

“Doing what?” he asked.

“Thinking about it. The state of our relationship.”

John was silent for a second. It was true that he’d been thinking, but not really about their relationship as a whole. He considered it. It was probably true that they couldn’t really just be considered flatmates or even just friends at this point; not necessarily in a committed relationship, but perhaps something a step above friends.

“A more serious relationship would be… Nice,” Sherlock mumbled.

John could hardly believe what he’d heard.

“Really? Us?” John replied.

“If you don’t want it, then you’re not obligated to be in one,” Sherlock said, sounding tense. His nerves were further evident in the slight tightening of the grip on John’s hand.

John’s heart practically melted on the spot. Sherlock obviously wanted this. How long had he waited for an opportunity to even begin a conversation about it?

And did John even want it?

After a quick bit of thinking, the answer was fairly obvious.

“Of course I want it, you old git,” John said, smiling again.

Sherlock faltered in his step a bit. John quickly corrected for him.

“Hey, watch it there,” John said playfully.

Sherlock said nothing for a couple moments, stiffly moving through the steps. At first John was worried that maybe he’d done something wrong, somehow.

After a while, though, Sherlock completely relaxed into John’s hold, sighing. John laid his head on Sherlock’s shoulder.

“Good,” Sherlock said quietly.

John smiled and let out a quick laugh to himself.

Him and Sherlock… He never would have guessed. But no matter how they got here, or how long they’ve waited unnecessarily, he knew now that the other man, the world’s only consulting detective, was his.

And the detective dances.

**Author's Note:**

> The idea popped into my head after hearing the line about Sherlock teaching John to waltz in TSoT. It was actually supposed to be a super short thing, but ended up being a bit longer.  
> Either way, I hope you enjoyed it!


End file.
